The 158% increase equates to around 28 cents a pound. This past summer bananas were selling for around 22 cents a pound! I believe it was Counterpunch that pointed out the fact that the big banana corporation had made a sizeable political contribution in order to get their case heard in a European export trade dispute?
Don't let anyone kid you the Russians know how to make high quality steel; with old time methods and no pollution control. I personally have a lot of empathy for the Russian steelworkers--the chances of them ever seeing anything out of their hard work is slim or none and not because of a level world steel playing field!
Tom
"Jeffrey St. Clair" wrote:
> Fuck you, Doug. You know damn well that I was in Seattle, on the streets
> every day, at nearly every violent confrontation between the cops, national
> guard and the police: at the McDonalds on Monday, at 6th and Union, 6th and
> University, 4th and Pine on Tuesady, on Wed. at Pike Place Market, Capitol
> Hill and, at 7 in the morning, right outside your Travelodge hotel, when the
> cops were beating an 83 year-old grandmother. I was gassed and whacked across
> the back with riot clubs. By Thursday, I was coughing blood, like many who
> had breathed CS gas for two days straight. I put Alex's Nation piece (based
> largely on my reporting in the AVA) on our website (now slightly updated)
> because the Nation wouldn't post it on theirs and because I'm sick as a dog
> haven't been able to finish my war journal.--jsc
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > [Careful readers might note some uncanny parallels between these two
> > texts, filed from a woodsy retreat hundreds of miles south of the
> > action. "Not out of churlishness," of course.]
> >
> > <http://www.counterpunch.org/>
> > December 3, 1999
> >
> > Here's a might-have-been for you. All day long, Tuesday, November 30,
> > the street warriors in downtown Seattle vindicated their pledge to
> > shut down the first day of the WTO talks, in itself a rousing
> > victory. Locked-down Earth-First!ers, Ruckus Society agitators,
> > anarchists and other courageous troublemakers sustained baton
> > charges, tear gas and rubber bullets, hopefully awaiting
> > reinforcement from the big labor rally taking place around the space
> > needle, some fifteen or twenty blocks from downtown. As the morning
> > ticked away and the cops got rougher, the street warriors kept
> > asking, "Where are the labor marchers?", expecting that at any moment
> > thousands of longshoremen and teamsters would reinforce them in the
> > desperate fray.
> >
> > But the absent legions of labor never showed. Suppose they had.
> > Suppose there had been 30,000 to 40,000 protesters around the
> > convention center, vowing to keep it shut all week. Would the cops
> > have charged such a force? Downtown could have been held all night,
> > and perhaps President Bill would have been forced to make his
> > welcoming address from SeaTac or from the sanctuary of his ardent
> > campaign funder, the Boeing Company. That would have been a
> > humiliation for imperial power of historic proportions, like the
> > famous greeting the Wobblies organized to greet president Woodrow
> > Wilson after the breaking of the Seattle general strike in l9l9 when
> > workers and their families lined the streets, block after block,
> > standing in furious silence as the President's motorcade passed by.
> > Wilson had his stroke not long thereafter.
> >
> > This might-have been is not posed out of churlishness, but to
> > encourage a sense of realism about what is possible in the struggle
> > against the trading arrangements now operative in the WTO.
> >
> > Take organized labor, as embodied in the high command of the AFL-CIO.
> > As these people truly committed to the destruction of the WTO? Of
> > course they aren't. It was back in February of this year that the
> > message came down from AFL-CIO HQ that rallying in Seattle was fine,
> > but the plan was not to shut down the WTO. Labor's plan was to work
> > from the inside. As far as any street action was concerned, the deals
> > were cut long ago. Labor might huff and labor might puff, but when it
> > comes to the WTO what labor wants, in James Hoffa's phrase, is a seat
> > at the table.
> >
> > And what does this seat at the table turn out to be? At Seattle those
> > labor chieftains were willing to settle for a truly threadbare bit of
> > window dressing, in the shape of a working group which will, in the
> > next round of WTO talks, be sensitive to labor's concerns. Here's the
> > chronology. The present trade round will ponder the working group's
> > mission and composition and make recommendations for the next round
> > of trade talks. Then, when the next round gets under way, the working
> > group will perhaps take form. Guess what? It's at least 20l4AD before
> > the working group is up and running.
> >
> > Sweeney's AFL-CIO isn't against the WTO. Sweeney himself is
> > physically fading into the woodwork. One well informed-friend of
> > CounterPunch used the brutal comparison (in health terms) of Boris
> > Yeltsin. Gerry Shea, Sweeney's head of government affairs and the man
> > essentially running the show at l6th St in Washington, has no
> > ideological posture on the issue, and listens closely to his old
> > friend David Smith, who heads the AFL-CIO's public policy department
> > and who is a zealous free trader, cerebellum thickly stuffed with
> > neo-liberal hokum.
> >
> > There are unions -- the autoworkers, steelworkers, teamsters,
> > machinists, UNITE -- which have rank and file members passionately
> > concerned about "free trade" when, as a in the case of teamsters, it
> > means Mexican truck drivers coming over the border at $2 an hour. But
> > how many of these unions are truly ready to break ranks and holler
> > Death to the WTO? For that matter, how many of them are prepared to
> > think in world terms, as the capitalists do? Take the steel workers,
> > the only labor group which, in the form of the Alliance for
> > Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, took up position in downtown
> > that Tuesday morning (and later fought with the cops and endured tear
> > gas themselves). But on that same day, November 30, the Moscow
> > Tribune ran a story reporting that the Clinton administration has
> > effectively stopped all cold-rolled steel imports from Russia by
> > imposing penalty duties of l78 per cent. Going into winter those
> > Russian working families at Severstal, Novolipetsk and Magnitogorsk
> > are facing tougher times than ever. The Moscow Tribune's report, John
> > Helmer, wasn't in doubt why: "Gore must try to preserve steel company
> > and steel worker support."
> >
> > As the preceding item suggests, there's no such thing as "free
> > trade". The present argument is not about trade, for which (except
> > for maybe a few bioregionialists in Ecotopia) all are in favor in
> > some measure. The argument is about how trade is to be controlled,
> > how wealth is to be made and distributed. The function of the WTO is
> > to express in trade rules the present balance of economic power on
> > the world held by the big corporations, which see the present WTO
> > round as an opportunity to lock in their gains, to enlist its formal
> > backing in their ceaseless quest for cheap labor and places to dump
> > their poisons.
> >
> > So ours is a worldwide guerilla war, of publicity, harassment,
> > obstructionism. It's nothing simple, like the "Stop the War" slogan
> > of the l960s. Capitalism could stop that war and move on. American
> > capitalism can't stop trade and survive on any terms it cares for.
> >
> > We truly don't want a seat at the table to "reform" trade rules,
> > because if we get one, then sooner or later we'll be standing
> > alongside Global Exchange's Medea Benjamin proclaiming that Nike,
> > which pays its workers less than 20 cents an hour, has made "an
> > astounding transformation", and in Seattle actually defending Nike's
> > premises from well-merited attack by the street warriors. Capitalism
> > only plays by the rules if it wrote those rules in the first place.
> > The day the WTO stipulates the phase-in of a world minimum wage of $3
> > an hour is the day the corporations destroy it and move on. Anyone
> > remember those heady days in the l970s of the New World Economic
> > Order when third world countries were going to get a fair shake for
> > their commodities? We were at a far more favorable juncture back
> > then, but it wasn't long before the debt crisis had struck, the NWEO
> > was dead and the mildly progressive UN Commission on Trade and
> > Development forever sidelined. Publicity, harassment,
> > obstructionism...Think always in terms of international solidarity.
> > Find targets of opportunity. South Africa forces domestic licensing
> > at cheaper rates of AIDS drugs. Solidarity. The Europeans don't want
> > bio-engineered crops. Fight on that front. Challenge the system at
> > the level of its pretensions. Make demands in favor of real free
> > trade. Get rid of copyright and patent restrictions and fees imposed
> > on developing nations. Take Mexico. Dean Baker, of the Center for
> > Economic and Policy Research reckons that Mexico paid the industrial
> > nations last year $4.2 billion in direct royalties, fees and indirect
> > costs. And okay, let's have real free trade in professional services,
> > with standardization in courses and tests so that kids from Mexico
> > and elsewhere can compete with our lawyers, accountants and doctors.
> >
> > A guerilla war, without illusions or respectable ambitions. Justice
> > in world trade is by definition a revolutionary and utopian aim.
> >
> > -----
> >
> > "Trade Wars, Trade Truths"
> > Alexander Cockburn
> > Beat the Devil
> > The Nation, 20 December 1999
> >
> > Here's a might-have-been for you. All day long, Tuesday, November 30,
> > the street warriors in downtown Seattle vindicated their pledge to
> > shut down the first day of the WTO talks, in itself a rousing
> > victory. Earth-First!ers chained together, Ruckus Society agitators,
> > anarchists and other courageous troublemakers sustained baton
> > charges, tear gas and rubber bullets, hopefully awaiting
> > reinforcement from the big labor rally taking place around the Space
> > Needle, some fifteen blocks from downtown. As the morning ticked away
> > and the cops got rougher, the street warriors kept asking, "Where are
> > the labor marchers?" expecting that at any moment thousands of
> > machinists and Teamsters would reinforce them in the desperate fray.
> >
> > But the legions of labor never showed. Suppose they had. Suppose
> > there had been 30,000 to 40,000 protesters around the Convention
> > Center, vowing to keep it shut all week. Would the cops have charged
> > such a force? Downtown might have been held all night, and perhaps
> > President Bill would have been forced to make his welcoming address
> > from SeaTac airport or from the sanctuary of his ardent funder,
> > Boeing. That would have been a humiliation for imperial power of
> > historic proportions, like the famous scene the Wobblies organized to
> > greet Woodrow Wilson after the Seattle general strike had been broken
> > in 191 - workers and their families lining the streets block after
> > block, standing in furious silence as his motorcade passed by. Wilson
> > had his stroke not long after.
> >
> > This might-have-been is not posed out of churlishness but to
> > encourage a sense of realism about the struggle against the trading
> > arrangements now operative in the WTO. Take organized labor, as
> > embodied in the high command of the AFL-CIO. Back in February of this
> > year the message came down from AFL HQ that rallying in Seattle was
> > fine, but the plan wasn't to shut down the works; it was to maneuver
> > from inside. No surprise. Institutional labor is not structured to be
> > the advance guard of a social movement. At the end of the day it
> > wants what it has always wanted: in James Hoffa's phrase, a place at
> > the table.
> >
> > And what does this particular seat at the table turn out to be? In
> > Seattle the labor chieftains were willing to settle for a token
> > footstool, in the shape of a working group that will, in the next
> > round of WTO talks, be sensitive to labor and environmental concerns.
> > On the current schedule, the present trade round will ponder the
> > working group's role and make recommendations for the next round -
> > suddenly it's 20l5 before the group is up and running.
> >
> > Gerry Shea, John Sweeney's assistant in charge of government affairs
> > and the man running the show on this from 16th Street in Washington,
> > is dedicated to staying tight with Clinton, Gore et al., and listens
> > closely to his friend David Smith, head of the AFL's public policy
> > department and a zealous neoliberal free-trader.
> >
> > There are unions—the autoworkers, steelworkers, Teamsters,
> > machinists, UNITE—that have rank-and-file members passionately
> > concerned about "free trade" when, as in the case of the Teamsters,
> > it means Mexican truck drivers coming over the border at $2 an hour.
> > But how many of these unions are truly ready to act in world terms,
> > just as capitalists do? The steel workers were the only labor group
> > that, as part of the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the
> > Environment, stood with the street warriors in downtown that Tuesday
> > morning (and later fought with the cops and endured tear gas
> > themselves). On that same day, November 30, the Moscow Tribune ran a
> > story reporting that the Clinton Administration has effectively
> > stopped all cold-rolled steel imports from Russia by imposing penalty
> > duties of l78 percent. Going into winter those Russian working
> > families at Severstal, Novolipetsk and Magnitogorsk are facing
> > tougher times than ever. The Moscow Tribune's reporter, John Helmer,
> > wasn't in doubt why: "Gore must try to preserve steel company and
> > steelworker support."
> >
> > As the preceding item suggests, there's no such thing as "free
> > trade." The present argument is not about trade, which (except for
> > maybe a few bioregionalists in my own dear home of Ecotopia) all
> > favor in some measure. The argument is about how trade is to be
> > controlled, how wealth is to be made and distributed. The WTO is
> > simply an expression of the present balance of economic power on the
> > world held by the big corporations, which see the present WTO round
> > as an opportunity to lock in their gains, to enlist its formal
> > backing in their ceaseless quest for cheaper labor and places to dump
> > their poisons. So ours is a worldwide guerrilla war, of publicity,
> > harassment, obstructionism. It's nothing simple, like "Stop the War"
> > in the l960s. Capitalism could stop that war and move on. American
> > capitalism can't stop trade (on its terms) and survive on any terms
> > it cares for.
> >
> > We truly don't want a place at the table to "reform" world trade
> > rules, because if we get one, then sooner or later we'll be standing
> > alongside Global Exchange's Medea Benjamin proclaiming that Nike,
> > which pays its workers less than 20 cents an hour, has made "an
> > astounding transformation." Capitalism plays only by the rules it
> > wrote in the first place. The day the WTO stipulates the phase-in of
> > a Third World minimum wage of $3 an hour is the day the corporations
> > destroy it and move on. Justice in world trade is by definition a
> > revolutionary and utopian aim.
> >
> > Publicity, harassment, obstructionism - Take the opportunities as
> > they come. Think always in terms of international solidarity. Find
> > targets of opportunity. South Africa forces domestic licensing of
> > AIDS drugs. Solidarity. The Europeans don't want bioengineered crops.
> > Seize on that opportunity. Make demands in favor of real free trade.
> > Get rid of copyright and patent restrictions and fees imposed on
> > developing nations. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy
> > Research reckons that Mexico paid the industrial nations $4.2 billion
> > in direct royalties, fees and indirect costs last year. Let's have
> > real free trade in professional services, with standardization in
> > courses and tests so that kids from Mexico, India and elsewhere can
> > come here and compete with our lawyers, accountants and doctors.
> > Challenge the system at the level of its public pretensions. A
> > guerrilla war, without illusions or respectable ambitions.